All posts tagged ‘h1n1’

Okay – there’s been lots and lots of interest in vaccinations on wired.com recently. Here’s a well-reasoned explanation as to why one reasonably smart and well-informed family won’t be getting flu shots this year.

First, my disclaimers – I’m not an anti-vaccination advocate, and all of my children have been vaccinated per school requirements. However, we have not vaccinated our daughters against HPV (Gardasil) and have no plans to.

Earlier this year (read very early July) – my oldest child come back from a foreign country. Soon after, said child and another person on the trip were sick. The other was confirmed H1N1. A couple of days later our youngest two were exhibiting classic symptoms of H1N1, and so we went to urgent care. All of the kids were prescribed Tamiflu. They also got to keep the face-masks handed out at urgent care – we were quite the sight and had a whole section of the waiting area all to ourselves.

After a week of Tamiflu for the kids and the whole family going stir-crazy being quarantined in our home, no one else got sick. No one.

So, three kids had H1N1, the rest of the family didn’t get sick even though we were exposed (and in very close quarters) for more than a week.

There are times when I wonder whether we’re really living in the 21st century. I’ve been having that feeling a lot recently, observing other parents (both online and off) discuss whether or not getting the H1N1 “Swine Flu” vaccine for their kids is a good idea.

I’m going to put it to you straight: Unless your child has a specific condition that makes it a bad idea for them to have the vaccine (and your pediatrician should be able to tell you if that’s the case), yes, you absolutely should get him/her vaccinated against H1N1. One of those conditions is a severe allergy to eggs, because in years past, all flu vaccines were based in egg serum. This year, some vaccine production will use a cell-culture process instead and thus be safe for those with egg allergies; your pediatrician might be able to help ensure that a dose of that variety is available for your child if necessary.

You may have read or seen various members of the “antivax” crowd saying that the H1N1 vaccine is as evil as they think most other vaccines are. Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, wrote an excellent article in August about these claims. Suffice it to say, any risk there may be of getting sick from the vaccine is so infinitesimal that the risk of getting H1N1 far, far outweighs it. Any time you see something written by one of the antivaxxers, consider whether the source is using scientific reasoning or not, because most of the time you’ll find their arguments hold less water than a sieve.

So please, for your kids’ sake, for your sake, and for the sake of your kids’ classmates, get your kids vaccinated against H1N1.

Update: There is a lot of misinformation floating around about the vaccine containing live virus. It is true that the nasal “FluMist” version of the vaccine does contain a form of the live virus that has been modified in the lab so it cannot infect anyone. To be on the safe side, the CDC does recommend that pregnant women, very young children and people with compromised immune systems not receive the nasal vaccine. The shot form of the vaccine contains only dead virus, thus is incapable of infecting anyone at all. The CDC’s website has a great deal of information for anyone with concerns.

Update 2: Five pertinent Wired Magazine articles are now available on Wired.com:

Many people have been somewhat . . . skeptical about the H1N1 pandemic. People have dismissed it on various grounds, ranging from conspiracy-mongering to the statistically illiteracy to more justified skepticism toward media hype. There have even been reports of flu parties, an idea that seems flatly insane.

If only there were a voice capable of cutting through the hype and flu-fatigue. An unbiased, dependably empirical-minded team of researchers, say. Like the MythBusters! The MythBusters would be great:

The PSA is timed to coincide with a new website, developed in conjunction with HowStuffWorks.com and Discovery Education, that will provide accurate, accessible information about H1N1 and best practices for its prevention. (Although MythBusters has their site up, the site for parents and educators isn’t ready yet. The CDC’s website offering guidance for schools has lots of information, though, and it’s pretty accessible.